Systems which automatically distribute customer contacts or calls (generically referred to as “ACD”) are often employed in telemarketing environments in which agents stationed at agent stations answer many different types of customer contacts (e.g., VoIP, emails, facsimile, chat room dialog, instant messages, other Internet contacts, etc.) from customers during a work day. As referred to herein, an ACD may be referred to as an automatic call distributor or an automatic contact distributor because the ACD handles a variety of communication media. In other words, the ACD handles many forms of communication, not just telephone calls in which a potential customer speaks with an agent. The term “ACD” may apply to any type of transaction processing system, and need not apply only to dedicated telemarketing systems or automatic call distributors. In some known ACD's, the agent may receive certain information about the type of customer call (i.e. contact) on a visual display at the agent set when a call or contact is distributed to the agent. An ACD is any such system which performs these functions and, for example, may employ a wide variety of architectures including integrated centralized systems, distributed systems, systems using one or more personal computers or servers, etc.
In some embodiments, ACD's may be used to support a number of different vendors in their telemarketing effort, and in such marketing environments, the agent is typically in communication with the customer or potential customer with respect to or on behalf of a particular vendor. The next contact that the agent processes may be on behalf of the same vendor or on behalf of a different vendor. In another embodiment, ACD's may be, used exclusively by or on behalf of a single vendor such that all of the contacts processed by the agent involve one particular vendor.
Often, a customer call is distributed to an agent that involves interactive voice dialog. This means a normal two-way verbal exchange. An ACD, however, may also distribute a non-voice dialog contact (i.e. call) to the agent. This does not involve direct two-way speech between the agent and the customer or caller. Non-voice dialog communication may be, for example, emails, facsimile, chat room dialog, instant messaging, Internet, etc. and the like. This is becoming more common as Internet traffic and the volume and frequency of electronic sales transactions increase. Handling of the non-voice dialog contact may, in some instances, require a specialized device or subcomponent of the ACD. In this situation, the agent may typically view text on a display screen that the caller typed in or transmitted. In response, the agent may provide information to the contact or request information from the caller, via the keyboard or other input device. Essentially, the dialog between the agent and the caller occurs on a display screen. Further, the agent may handle multiple calls. For example, the agent may typically handle two to five (or more) simultaneous non-voice dialog communications or transactions, which may be presented as two to five separate dialog windows on the display screen, which windows may, for example, be tiled or layered. Of course, the number of simultaneous transactions may vary significantly.
Typically, incoming calls are routed to the agent on a “time-stamp” or “first-come-first-serve” basis, whether the incoming call is a voice-based call or a text-based call. However, this may not be efficient, especially when real-world events mandate that such incoming call be serviced in accordance with a different priority scheme. Known transaction processing systems do not allow the assigned priority of incoming calls to be easily or quickly modified in response to important events, whether such events are business driven market conditions, or events of an emergency nature.
A need exists to permit the transaction processing system to apply certain rules to the incoming calls to establish a priority hierarchy, which priority hierarchy may be quickly and easily changed in real time to respond to real-world events or changing business conditions.